During our first church retreat in August 1991 at Yishun Country Club, we discussed establishing a network of home-based churches, initially in the North-East part of the island. Since then, we have grown in size and ministry focus. I want to highlight some of these developments. By studying our "roots," we can gain a clearer perspective on current evangelistic needs. We should not be daunted by the task ahead but trust that the Lord, who has led us this far, will continue to guide us until the work is done.
<aside> 🚧 The Challenge (1986)
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One of the significant challenges in gospel work is preserving the fruits of ministry, particularly in follow-up. I first faced this issue while serving in a multi-congregational church near Chinatown. My job seemed straightforward: contacting visitors to our church services and locating and assessing those who had backslid or gone missing. I was given two shoeboxes of visitor cards filled with contacts, including records of those who had left the church or gone Missing-in-Action (MIA). My role was to contact visitors, gauge their spiritual state, bring back the lost, counsel the weak, rebuke the unruly, and most importantly, “get them to the church on time!”
In those first few months, I learned many lessons, particularly about God's grace. I recall Bill (not his real name) and his wife. They were searching for a church to settle in. Both were devoted to the Lord and eager to serve Him meaningfully. It took a few months before I initially contacted them, but they soon became regular worshippers. Within a year, they left for mission work in Indonesia. Surprisingly, several months passed between his first visit and my call, yet he responded positively.
<aside> 🚧 Robbing God’s People of Initiative (1987)
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Yet something was not right. For every one that responded, many others never did and left through the church’s “big back door.” Some visitors decided not to follow Christ or refused to submit to the Word, but the high fallout rates highlighted the system’s inability to handle walk-ins. I realized this was a pastoral problem that every church needed to address, not just one for a paid worker to manage.
True enough, something had gone terribly wrong with the system as we knew it then. I had fallen into the trap of formalizing follow-up which should have been the responsibility of every member of the congregation but instead ended up at my desk. I was, in effect, robbing the ordinary church member of his initiative in reaching out to family and friends.
Soon, I felt spiritually dry instead of flourishing. I couldn't sing, pray, or laugh in church; I was weary when I should have been rejoicing in the God of my salvation. When the pastor’s wife gave me a book on “Burnout,” I realized I had exhausted my own strength and began to seek answers from heaven.
<aside> 🚧 Fathers, Not Tutors (1988)
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Toward the end of my first year, I went on a follow-up mission trip to Palawan, Philippines, to check on our brethren there. The trip was uneventful until the day before our return to Singapore. An American missionary named Norman Holmes, who had seen our banner advertising nightly gospel meetings, asked to speak with me. Though I was a stranger to him, this meeting turned out to be God's way of teaching me an important lesson.
Norman had been on the island for some time, planting churches among the unchurched and poorer sections of the community. He introduced me to a teaching I had never seen before, concerning spiritual fatherhood: “The path you are on will make you an excellent tutor but never a spiritual father.” He then showed me from Scripture the need to support and encourage new believers as a father cares for his newborn.
I immediately understood that Norman was addressing my situation. I had become a tutor in Christian religion rather than a spiritual father, and I felt helpless to fulfill this high calling. Twenty months after returning to Singapore, I received a letter from Norman. He once again challenged me to walk in the truths he had shared with me nearly two years earlier. This coincided with my growing frustration in the follow-up ministry and a realization that I had become too comfortable with the administrative aspects of the organization.
As I wrestled for answers, I wondered what good church structure was if it only displayed an unbending and stubborn attitude toward the needs of the people. What was the point of carrying on the show of liturgy, chorus, and committee meetings while pretending that nothing was seriously wrong? At that time the words of Jesus about new wine not being able to be put into old wineskins couldn’t have been more descriptive.
<aside> 🚧 The Search For New Wineskins (1990)
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Soon after this, I came across two influential books that spoke directly to my situation. One was a classic in preaching, Wesley’s Forty-Four Sermons; the other was a contemporary guide on effective church follow-up, Ralph Neighbor’s Shepherd’s Guidebook. Despite being centuries apart, both addressed the same issue of the church's "back-door". Wesley tackled it through the class-band groups of early Methodism, while Neighbor approached it through the modern cell-group church growth movement.
Both books urged a reexamination of the definitions of "church" and "follow-up" and criticized the lack of accountability among church members for evangelistic efforts. These and other books, like Howard Snyder's New Wineskins, consistently emphasized that ministries should empower ordinary church members to handle outreach, evangelism, and follow-up. This was a wake-up call, especially for churches focused on self-preservation. It opened my eyes and fundamentally changed my view of the local church's role as an evangelistic center.
<aside> 🚧 The Church In Flats (1989)
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These books, along with Robert Coleman's Masterplan of Evangelism, validated my unspoken convictions. They strengthened my resolve against formalism and filled me with joy as I read global testimonies, including reports of the house church movements in China and Africa. These stories illustrated the possibility of being the church wherever we are, without the burden of maintaining expensive, underutilized buildings.